Page:Cherokee Trails (1928).pdf/94

 sign; only to keep them back, to frustre them, and make their shooting wild.

He was pretty well doing this when his gun went dry. He pumped and pumped, thinking it might have jammed, but there wasn't a kick out of it. The last cartridge was gone, and he had run off without asking that girl in pants for a handful to carry him over such an emergency. He was backing off to get under cover, for Frank was almost opposite him, the two pursuers hot behind, but a good distance behind, for Frank was fresh after his little rest and grooming, and he was heading home.

It was all off now, Simpson thought, wondering what chance he had to make it to the house, reload and get into the game before those fellows closed in on the horse at the corral, where he would run, shoot him, strip him of the stuff behind the saddle, and go. As he backed away from the fence, keeping under cover of the weeds, Frank dashed by, and somebody poked Simpson in the back with something that felt like a gun.

Simpson jumped, his hair as stiff as wire, something cold crawling over him, thinking one of them had got behind him, as such foolishly impossible things will flash into a man's thoughts when something jolts him off balance that way. It was a gun: Eudora Ellison was handing it to him, her eyes big and luminous, her hand pressed to her panting breast.

A long-barreled pistol with a rough rubber grip. Simpson grabbed it as a drowning man would have caught a float flung to him in the moment of his extremity. The two men who were chasing Frank turned and flung mud higher than the orchard trees at the first shot.